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Scientists first reported it in the mid… whatever it is that people decided to call that decade between the 90s and the teens. Every year there were fewer and fewer bees, whole colonies just biting the dust, and nobody could figure out why.

Oh, we theorized, certainly. Someone came up with a really fantastic theory called Spontaneous Colony Collapse that made it seem as if these abrupt, catastrophic disappearances of entire hives, entire colonies were something that just sort of whoops! happened and there wasn’t that much we could do about it. That theory kind of slid out into the common consciousness, and we stopped worrying about it, because we had to worry about not losing our houses and what was that crazy Snooki girl going to get up to this week.

So we stopped paying attention to the bees, we stopped worrying about where they might be going, and hey wasn’t it nice that it seemed like maybe we weren’t getting stung as much in the spring and summer because there weren’t so damn many of them any more?

It was a little more than ten years later when the bees actually made it onto the endangered species list. I remember reading about it, and being disturbed and sort of horrified – I mean, BEES, you know? They’re just one of those critters that are always everywhere, like ants. Yet right after I read it, I didn’t really think about it.

Till I went to the park. I do that sometimes, just to get out somewhere that’s sort of nature and sort of a museum and there’s people and squirrels and flowers. It’s a whole bunch of niceness all together, and in this one park that I really like I’ve found this spot where there is an old stone bench around behind a wall, and it’s almost surrounded by flowers. Nobody really sits in it, because it’s in the shade a lot of the day and the stone is always cold, but it feels good to me, especially after all the walking. I can still hear people playing, but I get that little haven all to myself.

I was sitting there when I saw, so soon after reading that article, a bee. I didn’t quite notice it, because like I said. Bees are everywhere – except that now they’re not. When it clicked over in my head what I was looking at, I sat up, and went fumbling in my pocket for my mobile to take a picture of it. I was able to get the camera up, and zoomed in on the buzzing wings I could see as it hovered over the daylilies. That was when I realized there wasn’t just one, there were TWO! One was darting around after the other, and I know well and good that bees don’t pair off and mate or anything like that, but if there were two, maybe there were more. Maybe there was a colony in the park!

I followed them with my camera, which was a little awkward on zoom, until abruptly one overtook the other and they stopped dead in the air, hovering. I focused, and nearly dropped the phone.

One of them was a bee. One was not.

The bee was hanging nearly upside down in the air, kicking and twitching while it was held by one back leg in the hand of what looked like nothing so much as a tiny human skeleton with bee wings. And I don’t mean tiny like the size of a baby, I mean the thing was probably no longer than my pinky, dark and undeniably made of slender bones. In its other hand it held what looked like a bird or chipmunk’s legion, snapped in half. It poised above the thing’s head like a hammer, and then crashed down against the bee, dashing open its small dark head and spattering some fluid upon the lily below them. I couldn’t stop watching as the skeletal fairy-like creature landed them heavily upon the flower, tossing the bone aside. I couldn’t hear anything but the buzzing of its wings, though watching its jaw work rapidly I fancied I could hear a chitter as it rubbed one hand up and one hand down the body of the fallen bee.

Then it plunged its face down toward the dead insect, biting hard and wrenching a huge chunk out of the fuzzy black and yellow hide. It chewed and chewed and then bent to do it again, decimating the bee’s form in slow, methodical, utterly ferocious chunks. Soon there was nothing left but the legs, which got shoved haphazardly down into the bell of the flower, which was smeared with the same dark juice of which there had been a spatter from the death blow.

Apparently sated, the skeletal… fairy isn’t the right word for it, but good goddamn if that isn’t exactly what it looked like! It jumped aloft, wings beating their quiet, steady thrum, and it circled the lilies once before flying away, in search of I presume some new prey.

How in the hell was I going to report this? Worse yet – when those things ran out of bees, what would they turn to for food next?

~~~

This piece of Nightmare Fuel was inspired by this picture by estherase on Flickr, under Creative Commons license.

That was partly a blessing, because that was what was allowing George Gordonforth, Assistant Night Manager of Stick-e-Bunz 24 Hour Discount Bakery, shimmy and scramble his way up a cement and metal support piling at least as thick around as his own not inconsiderable waist as if this were an even on a japanese gameshow and his chance of winning were dependent on rescuing a bug-eyed kitten stuck at the top.

It was also a curse, because it was allowing the zombies to climb after him.

They’d been after him for miles now, shambling a lot quicker than he liked as he had run through the woods, and followed the woods into a ravine where the rock walls amused themselves by dislodging bits of their own faces to roll underfoot for him and the double handful of his pursuers. What little luck was with him was such that they tripped more often than he did on the rolling hazards, and so it was largely them at which the little cascades of rocks were aimed, followed by the disconcerting deeply grinding chuckle from the surrounding mountainside.

When he’d spotted the train trestle ahead, his heart had leapt and then sort of landed on itself; sure he’d been able to keep running in this place when back home he would have collapsed panting to the ground miles back, and he was able to leapfrog boulderfall like some sort of preternatural parker expert, but even seeing it in glimpses through the trees he was dodging around, it looked to be at least some 40 yards in the air. As he got closer to the base of it, he corrected that judgement to be more around 100 yards up, sailing overhead from one side of the gorge to the other atop their thick supports.

It helped a lot, when climbing, that instead of just reaching around and clambering up the support as if he was a kid shimmying up a light pole, this place was screwed up enough at the root level that he was able to shove his hands straight into the concrete and hold on to pull himself upward, then jam in his feet and repeat with his hands further up, without actually apparently damaging the support. Unfortunately, as the group milled about at the base, it didn’t take them nearly as long as he would have liked to watch him and then begin mimic the movements, some on the same support, some on its twin nearby.

He was a few yards down from the top when he realized he could feel a faint rumble. A train, against all expectation! As quickly as he could push himself (fucked up physics or no, he didn’t feel like falling the length of a football field to see what would happen), he did until he was almost bent double beneath the wooden slats. Then he stretched his leg across and, in a leap of faith, let go with his hands so that he could jam his toes into the other support, straddling the gap.

Reaching up between the wooden slats of the trestle, and rather thankful for the gut that wasn’t letting him see the creatures creeping closer, he stretched a hand high and splayed it open as a train rumbled closet and closer. Soon it was roaring overhead, and he waited, biding his time until he felt something twitch at his trousers – THAT was when he let his hand grab hold of an axel and yanked as hard as he could.

Like the impossible leaping, and the climbing, screwy physics played nice and he felt his body darting upward through splintering wood of first the trestle and then the floorboards of the train, landing him on a lovely plus gold and red oriental runner carpet next to the hole he’d just created. Helpful hands reached for him, pulled George to his feet, and then settled him in a seat of his own.

“Welcome aboard, Monsieur!” came a smooth tenor by his elbow, and George half-turned, smiling – only to see that the face that he gazed into had a thoroughly reddish cast that followed through all of the skin exposed around the rather fine tuxedo. “Would Monsieur care, perhaps, for some tea?”

He nodded dumbly and sat back with a sigh to mull over this new development. Devils, more devils. They seemed to be everywhere, running everything, but never seemed to claim ownership of things, nor really participate.

That could only mean he wasn’t finished yet, that there was more to come, and when the devil returned bearing an exquisite tea service and set it on the table before him, he grabbed the creature’s sleeve. “Listen, you gotta tell me, what was that valley? Where is this train headed?”

With the detached elegance any Jeeves sought to acquire, the devil filched its sleeve free of George’s fingers and picked up the pot to pour the steaming water over the teabag already in the cup. “Frying Pan, sir – and Fire, of course. Do enjoy, won’t you?” It glided away, leaving George to look into the teacup he was already lifting to try to figure out what kind of tea he had been served.

There, sitting in the steaming water, was a neatly severed scrotum.

“Teabagged,” he groaned, and tossed the cup altogether down the hole he’d left in the floor before dropping his head to bang against the table.

In late evening Vienna, which was also early morning Vienna, candles and lanterns still burned in many windows along streets and canalways, red wax dripping down candleshafts onto the aging marble of softly arching bridges. Soft wafts of music drifted here and there from various balls both private and public that had not yet called it a night, though the horizon was beginning to faintly lighten in the east.

It was through this perfumed, pre-dawn fairyland that I and Lucia were walking, hanging on to each other as the heady whirl of the waltz and the spin of a cup too much of good wine unbalanced our steps just a touch. Not that we needed it, but it all gave us a rather fine excuse to have out arms about each other as we turned to cross a canal and paused in the middle of one of the bridges, leaning upon the solid stone rail. From here, it was a wonderful bit of ancient beauty, to see the unearthly casts of lights and shadows from the various balls playing across the buildings, and the candles and lanterns flickering by the flowing water.

“What are those?” Lucia asked, pointing at one of the decorated floats drifting down the canal, and I smiled, pleased to be able to share the tale I had learned only a few days before about the thick candles on the round, heavily decorated little floats, like strange fey flower blossoms more than a foot across. “They’re meant to be beautiful, like everything – like you, bella – but they are also said to be a memorium. The carnival of Vienna is full of delights and enticements, but every year there are tragedies. Too much fun, too much drink, and in the canals folk have fallen. Each of these is said to represent one of those who have lost their life into the Carnival, and is supposedly decorated in the colors of what they were wearing when they were lost – though how folk would know that is beyond me..”

I leaned closer, trailing my fingertips up her bare arm, my lips nearly brushing her ear as I whispered, “And it is said that, if you call out to them, one of the lost spirits will rise to rejoin the Carnival.” I could feel the shiver thrill down her arm, goosebumps rising on the skin, and smiled, shifting my hand to rest against the warm gathered blue satin at her lower back. Arousal tinged with fear, I had found, was all the more delectable.

Despite the thrill I had given her, though, she suddenly laughed, and leaned away to wrest a candle loose from the stone railing, while the float drifted ever closer; its candle was stark white in comparison to the thick garners of orange and russet silk and organza surrounding it. “Come, o lost spirit!” Lucia cried out gaily, and she leaned out over the water, my hand steadying her (and, I must admit, slipping a bit from her back to her bottom; who could resist such a sweet swell, even covered by bustled cloth as it was?) as she stretched out and tilted the candle, letting the molten wax stream from it onto the surface of the canal, and into the path of which the orangey float gently bobbed. The red wax dribbled across the folds of cloth and the silk flowers, and then a few drops fell right into the pool of heat-clarified white wax atop the candle.

Without warning, the lot of it tilted and lifted, water running off the sides to reveal a white porcelain mask underneath. The float was abruptly no mere float, but was in fact a broad and elaborate hat for someone who peered up at us, the eyeholes pinched down at the nose and up at the outer ends like cat-eyes. There was kohl or makeup around their eyes, darkening all of it, and Lucia’s laughter cut off in a yelp of surprise. Orange cloth dipped down from the broad hat to tie under the shin, and seemed to meet more cloth at the neck, though it was difficult to see from that distance, in the dark.

Difficult to see until, with no assistance, the figure rose straight up from the water to float before the bridge, and then drifted close, reaching out gloved hands for Lucia’s, covering them around the candle. There was silence, although I think my mouth was working, trying to put word to any one of the impossible explanations my mind threw up, turned over, and discarded. Over the rail it floated, and then turned, swooping around Lucia in a circle but still holding her hands in a very definite beat that I realized after several paired turnings was a waltz.

“Nih- Nico?” she stammered as she was pulled in the lilting rhythm across the bridge, and then brought to a halt by the far rail.

“I’m… It must be a trick,” I managed, and my voice was unconvincing even to myself. I should have dashed forward, stopped it from raising Lucia’s hands and the candle; I winced as it forced it to tilt, pouring wax upon Lucia’s piled-up hair, and she yelped, I hope more in outrage than as pain. Then the straightened candle was settled upon it – and Lucia released, before being abruptly shoved over the railing on that side of the bridge by the thing swathed in the elaborate orange costume. I heard her cry out, and the splash, and then I ran for the railing, past the thing which was standing there looking down.

As I came alongside, it swept away, dancing toward the street I’d just left in time to a strain of violins I could barely hear before I screamed out for Lucia, calling her name, and again.

Then the round float, piled high with blue gathered satin and dark ribbons the color of Lucia’s curls, floated up out of the water, and the red candle was in the center. Before it even made it to the air, it was burning.

~~~

This piece of Nightmare Fuel was inspired by this picture, artist unknown:

So no shit, there I was, minding my own business, right – like you do when you’re at work, y’know. I was sitting there, in my cube, trying to finish up the Total Production Summary report, and it was the end of the day on Friday, and I just wanted to get it DONE so I didn’t have to go back in the next day to complete the damn thing, or hear all about it on Monday.

I was just sitting there and the whole cube went dim. I mean, there was some light from the overhead, y’know, but most of my light comes from the windows, sort of bouncing off the pale grey wall outside the doorway of my cubical. I figured it was just Milton, y’know? I’m not sure if that guy even ever goes home, the way he just hovers all the time. Someone once told me he actually sleeps behind the file shelves in the basement, and I wouldn’t put it past him, he just creeps me right the fuck out, y’know?

So I was like, “What do you need, Milty? I’m kinda in the middle of something, here.” And my cube got dimmer, and I could feel him behind me, like he stepped all he way into the doorway, and I just waited for him to mumble at me like he does. But he was quiet, and that was weird enough even for that freaking weirdo that I spun my chair.

And there it was. This huge blob, taller than Lumbergh even, dark like someone spilled ink all over a gigantic beanbag chair or something, except I never saw any beanbag chair with eyes like that, shiny and yellow and red, and it was looking down at me and I hope to god I didn’t actually piss myself, even though I totally felt like I had to then, seeing a thing like that.

It had about fifty tentacles, like a squid without suckers, or tree roots or whatever, and they just sort of unfurled out the front of it, and reached past me to grope around on my desk. Fucker knocked my Total Production Summary on the floor! Then it poked in my pen cup with one of them, and another yanked my stapler out from behind my Out tray. It made the weirdest noise then, almost like a sigh, but garbled, like somebody sighing through a vat of oil, y’know? It dropped my stapler.

Then all those tentacles curled around me and dragged me straight in, and here we are, you and me. So I don’t know about you, but I really can’t see much of anything. And it’s wet in here, I’m getting it all over my skin and starting to itch, and I can’t even get a good scratch in because the thing keeps moving around. I hope I don’t get a rash. Y’know?

~~~

This piece of Nightmare Fuel was inspired by this picture supplied by G+ user Kary Gaul:

“It’ll be just like LOST,” my agent encouraged me, “Mixed with Survivor, except that you won’t have to crash-land first, and it’s going to be REALLY real, you won’t have a whole foodservice crew just off camera.”

He was more right than he knew, really; we were air-lifted to this island through god-awful storms, and I was a little surprised we didn’t crash. People started disappearing before the end of the first week, and it didn’t take long before none of us could trust one another.

I struck out for the far side of the island, but I feel like something’s been watching me. Last night I felt all the hairs stand up on the back of my neck, even though it was so warm that it was dusk, with no cloudcover to keep the heat in, and I was still sitting in front of my cookfire with my shirt tied around my waist. Casually as I could I reached out to poke the fire and grabbed the end of one of the longer branches sticking out of it.

I didn’t hear anything, but there was a bit of a prickling breeze. I stood with a yell, brandishing the flaming stick over my head like I was some kind of viking with a freaking broadsword – staring right at this huge, roiling amorphous dark cloud. It shifted and boiled this way and that, and then arched over to reach past me, broadening like a hand, and then collapsing around the stick that had gone still up behind me.

The fire went out.

~~~

This piece of Nightmare Fuel was inspired by this picture supplied by MattTheSamurai; see his DA gallery for more work:

If you go out when the sun has gone down below the horizon, and start walking, you’ll get to the road, see. You’ll get to the road and you’d take it away from the city, away from town, away from the houses; you’d take it out past where the light pollution blots out the stars. It all fades away from sight once you get to the trees, and sure it’s dark, but that’s no worry because they’re just trees.

It’d be a long walk through those trees, but you’d keep going, and eventually the trees would get shorter and scrubbier, see, and the edge of the road’d change from sidewalks and sharp ninety degree curbs to a sloping berm, something to keep the mud back when it rains and give the water a direction to run to that isn’t under the tires. Not that you’d be worrying about water under the tires when you’re walking, and anyway, you wouldn’t do this while it was raining, because how would you see anything?

So you’d keep walking and the trees themselves’d thin and get scrubby, most of them not too tall any more except for a few jack pine poking all loose and spindly above the rest of them, and it’s there you’d be able to see the stars way up there, and you can feel the cool of the air without the trees holding the heat down and the clouds to pin in the atmosphere. It’s good though, there not being clouds, because there’d be enough light from the stars for you to see there’s not even a berm edging the road now, it’s just old pavement that’s been bleached pale grey by so many summer suns, and the edge of it just sort of crumbles off into dirt and tall wild grasses.

You’d be walking along and sometimes there’d be no trees now, breaking away into fields, but not really the kind with fences and cows and berry bushes or anything, just fields where the ground is too tired to hold up a tree any more.

It’d take quite a bit of walking before you’d get to this one field where there’s just one of those jackpine growing way up above everything in the middle of it, and right at the bottom of it there’s a – well, I guess you could call it a house. I wouldn’t, but you could. There’d be a stone part and that’s where the doorway is, cut rough and square into the fieldstone and mortar walls of that blocky little one-story, and sort of slung against the side of there’d be pretty much the same thing but of wooden planks with two windows right in the front of it.

You could just walk right across the field to that building in the early morning starlight, walk right up to that stone doorway, or to those windows in the wood and look in, but it would be too dark in there to see so maybe that wouldn’t be a good idea. And if you did that you’d be off the road, and there would be some movement out of the corner of your eye in the predawn light. You’d do what anybody would do, then, is you’d turn and look, and it would be hard to see much of anything except for the shape that had moved away from the open doorless doorway, loping long and low toward the edge of the field.

It would get there and it would stop, and hunker down a little more, and it would look sort of almost human in the dawn light except the legs stop just below where the knees seem to be and it was running along on that bit. And you might see its mouth open wide to vomit something out that you can’t tell the shape of because it would fall in the shadow it would be casting as the sun is threatening to come up over the low trees and the stars are gone and bent over there it would turn its head to look at you and you wouldn’t be able to make it believe that you didn’t see anything when you looked in that window because it isn’t like you the eyes are two pinpricks like tiny little stars and it can SEE in the dark it can SEE you and couldn’t let you go knowing what you know and what it would think you had SEEN

you’d miss that part of your brain you see and then you’d want to go try to find where you’d left it and it would hurt you see you see you SEE YOU

~~~

This piece of Nightmare Fuel was inspired by this picture supplied by G+ user David Lee; artist unknown:

I suppose I should not fool myself that this letter shall ever reach you, yet I cannot help but hope. With the famine and the disease that followed it like a hungry child in the wake of the baker’s cart, what is there really left to us now but hope?

Yet even that has been stripped from me now.

I knew as I waved to you from the boat, watching you on the short as we drew away from harbor in our small fleet, that this was no ordinary fishing trip. There was so little fish to be had – too much of it belly up, you saw well as I – but even if legends fill bellies no more than food, at least chasing after them gives the feeling that we tried.

Besides which, someone claims to have seen the beast some several seasons back. On that little bit of say-so we’ve been sailing out, and the island is in sight now, just as he said it’d be, pale and shimmering in the moonlight.

I drew the short straw, love, and I’m alone on this boat.

We dropped anchor to weigh off the coast of the island, letting it drag heavily in the sea where the anchorline can’t reach bottom. As I sat and waited, the others clambered into the other ship. They left me behind with run of the ship, with gunpowder and biscuits and matches. They said if it was to surface it was like to eat me.

I saw something a few hours ago some several miles off. I saw it, and the waves that hit the longship rocked it like an angry cradle. Just the one looming lump of dark glistening flesh glimpsed above the waves, but I saw it. I understand why they left me so many powder kegs. I wonder how much longer it will take the thing to reach me.

I write this letter and affix it to one of the cork buoys in hope that it will be found and passed along to you in spite of that hard and hungry thing out there.

Not out. Down.

It’s down there, and I haven’t seen any gulls nor fish in several hours now. The water’s beginning to ripple, and I think it’s time I be ready to light the powder kegs.

I miss you, love, and if this be my final letter, know that I was glad to bring food to your table again at last.

~~~

This piece of Nightmare Fuel was inspired by this picture supplied by G+ user Alex Feltir Sunderland; artist unknown:

She rides through the woods, they say, they say she rides through the woods

they say

the carriage she rides in is not just a carriage despite its four walls
floor roof and wheels

the carriage she rides in is not just a carriage
it once was a house, they say

The carriage she rides in it once was a house and it stood
in the wood
in the wood it once stood
Not big nor imposing

but everyone knew
(they say)
everyone knew it was there

The carriage she rides in it once was a house
not big nor imposing
but terrible, true
stood in the wood
squatting
and waiting
for someone like me
and someone like you
the house (now a carriage) housed something much stranger
than they can remember
or dare even to try

the house (now a carriage) made villagers shudder
if they spoke of it then in the village nearby

The house was a place of which villagers warned
and not just to children
to keep them in line
the house was a place
they all did avoid
and always from travelers tried it to hide

She rides through the woods, they say, they say she rides through the woods

they say

the carriage she rides in is not just a carriage despite its four walls
floor roof and wheels

the carriage she rides in is not just a carriage
it once was a house, they say

The house was a place of which villagers warned
especially to children
to keep them just fine
but one of the children would not be forbidden
one of the children went wandering one night

The folk of the village don’t talk of what happened
(The village is gone many years by, you see)
The child to the house went
Alone and determined
In love for her village
she set the house free

The carriage she rides in it once was a house
Now walls and four wheels and a roof and a floor
Protected with thick thick thick velvety curtains
drawn back
rope-and-tassel
in place of a door

The curtains are russet
matching the carriage
and in it the child forever she rides
pulled through the wood by a clip-clopping horse
with a single dark forehoof
and dark-blinkered eyes

She rides through the woods, they say, they say she rides through the woods

they say

the carriage she rides in is not just a carriage despite its four walls
floor roof and wheels

the carriage she rides in is not just a carriage
it once was a house, they say

The curtains are russet
the carriage is too
and gently it rocks slowly to slowly fro
and in it she waits
as she rides
as she watches
and carefully cradles in one hand a rose

The curtains and carriage
and rose they are red
and the horse that is pulling is deeply sorrel
but the girl she is pale
as her dress (which is samite
and matches the horse’s three other hooves well)

The horse is unhurried
in pulling the house that now is a carriage
in pulling the girl as she searches
they say
for wandering vagabonds
bandits and hooligans
haunting the paths and the travelers’ way

She rides through the woods, they say, they say she rides through the woods

they say

the carriage she rides in is not just a carriage despite its four walls
floor roof and wheels

the carriage she rides in is not just a carriage
it once was a house, they say

The carriage is quiet so long as the horse
pulls it softly and slowly
the carriage is red
and so is the rose
that the silent girl carries
while riding alined in the wood
(so they said)

The carriage does shimmer
when dappled with sunlight
it catches the eye of the wandering thief
and draws them a-toward it
and coaxes them inward
where waiting the girl sits
and watts sans relief

The carriage (it once was a house)
them it beckons
and in past the velvety curtains they’ll crawl
and the ropes she will pull
and the horse will keep walking
the carriage keep swaying
as curtains they fall

Then the strange carriage
the red it does darken
as paint it the girl does within and without
with rose as her paintbrush
she feeds it all over
with all of the blood
that her captives spill out

She rides through the woods, they say, they say she rides through the woods

they say

the carriage she rides in is not just a carriage despite its four walls
floor roof and wheels

the carriage she rides in is not just a carriage
it once was a house (they say)

~~~

This piece of Nightmare Fuel was inspired by this picture by Beanhugger:

I’m not sure how long he had been watching me.He was on my walk home; there was a path that cut through one corner of the park, usually not often used because it was so shady and secluded, but I took it one day when I was a hurry and found where it twisted back toward the brick wall that ringed the park and in doing so dipped right into the sun, then back into the shade to exit past the corner. I loved taking that cutoff because it meant I didn’t have to go past the newsstand, and if I wasn’t going past the newsstand than I wasn’t tempted to buy a packet of cigarettes and I didn’t have to pretend I didn’t see that increasingly elderly bum with the cardboard sign.

One day I rounded a stand of trees, and it was just… there. Maybe I’d never noticed it before, but it was a figure of a boy pressed up against the brick, but not ONLY pressed against the brick. He was made of brick, and wasn’t moving. Just standing there, for all the world like a regular boy leaning against the wall. It was well lit by the sun, and half hidden by some of the low-growing scrub bushes, and I thought (once I got over an initial rush of HOLYCRAP over there being a human figure where I wasn’t expecting one) that was why I hadn’t seen it before.

It was a pretty well-carved piece, I thought; there was a lot of attention into getting a realistic cast to the hair carved into the brick, but it was a pity the curve of the mouth was so sad. I didn’t think much more about the statue once I rounded through the sun and continued into the shade. It was just a new part of the walk.

The next day I wasn’t surprised by it, still leaning there against the wall; if anything I was looking for it, and it was easier to see. Not as much of it was hidden by the bushes, and I wondered if someone had come through and trimmed them down.

The next day, though, it had definitely moved.

It wasn’t just that the figure of the boy was more visible – it was several yards down the uneven wall, and in a wholly different pose. Rather than leaning back against the wall, it was turned somewhat, shoulder touching the wall and back bent in a bit of a crouch. Its head was still turned my direction, though, the shadowed orbs of the eyes with their somewhat dugout pupils (very greek, that, I’d thought) trained on where I emerged from under the trees. My stomach flipped queasily and settled quickly. Someone must have installed several of them around the park and still be playing with their placements, I decided.

The next day it was further along the wall, bent down nearly in a crouched, the unhappy cast of its mouth further deepened, and my own mouth curved into a frown in return. Still its eyes were pointed right at the path, as if it were watching for me, and I scowled. It was really a rather unfriendly bit of art, if you ask me, and I moved more quickly on my way.

The next day I was watching for it as I rounded the trees, and this time it wasn’t against the wall – this time the brickboy was freestanding, close to the side of the path where it bent nearest the wall, feet planted apart and both arms outstretched. The meticulously carved hands were outstretched palms-first, as if urging whoever came down the path – urging ME – to stop, to go back.

I actually found myself moving off the other side of the path to avoid it before I caught myself, and stepped closer to look at the statue. It was motionless of course, but the expression was changed on this one. The eyebrows were lifted, and the mouth had been carved slightly open, as if it were speaking. The empty eyes were looking straight toward where I always came around the trees, and I turned to look there. From where I was not standing, next to the sunwarmed brick, the shadows under the trees were startlingly dark, and without further ado I turned my back on boy and path and hurried for home.

The whole weekend I was away from the park, my travels through the city taking me elsewhere entirely, and I didn’t spare much of a thought for the brickboy. Not until I was getting ready to leave on Monday morning, thinking about what the day ahead of me would hold. I guess the thought of the creepy brickboy and my gut-deep anger at being so unnerved by an unknown artist was what prompted me to grab the small hammer out of the junk drawer and stick it in my bag.

At the end of the day I found myself walking slower and slower as I entered the park and hooked off the main path to follow my smaller shortcut through the trees, until I was just shy of the sharp curve into the sunny patch, and I stopped. My heart was pounding, wondering where I was going to find the brickboy, and I felt suddenly, startlingly cold – and then my cheeks flamed, very angry. Some goddamn street artist was fucking with me and not even bothering to explain? Fuck that! I fumbled in my bag for the hammer, gripping the handle tightly under the canvas as I marched around the stand of trees.

I didn’t see him at first, and for a joyful moment I thought that perhaps he was gone completely. Then I spotted him. He was back against the wall again, not just against it but almost entirely hidden by a curve in it, most of his body behind and only his head, a shoulder, and one hand planted against the wall in view. Still, or again, he was looking my way, and my stomach lurched.

A god. Damn. STATUE. Snarling somewhere in my mind, I yanked out the hammer and all but ran toward the brickboy, raising my woefully feeble weapon to dash down against it, first the arm, and then the shoulder, and then that meticulously carved hair. It was just after I shattered off the nose and was raising the hammer again that I noticed that the eyes weren’t looking at me, at where I had come downy he path. They were looking above me and behind, toward the trees from which I had emerged.

A shadow fell over us both.

~~~

This piece of Nightmare Fuel was inspired by this picture by David Swan:

A long time ago, histocasts claimed, we were one race, living on one planet, and the sky above it was barely penetrable except to unmanned, clunky satcom units and the occasional shortjump to the totally non-T-formed moon. It sounded so lonely, so barbaric for most of my life, and I couldn’t imagine what it must have web like not to be able to hop on a transport to go to another world, let alone not knowing about all the creatures the universe housed. I always envied those who had been among the first to break away.

We’d long since made contact, so much contact, and some of the non-sapiens were pretty funky, but hey, that’s the beauty of the ‘verse, right? Little bit of room for everybody, and all kinds to fill it up.

Even so, we’d sort of hit the point by the time I signed up for some of the edgeworld and outbound exploratories, I figured it was mostly going to be sightseeing with notetaking. I never imagined that for the first time in several generations we were going to run across somebody – somebodies – new. Quietly hoped, maybe, but honestly: what are the odds at this stage? There was so much explored and so many contacts, what was really left? Sure, I felt like I’d missed the boat, but I had the chance to travel. That was cool enough.

Then we landed on what we thought was unformed planet with sapien-acceptable atmo to check out the mineable resources.

It was less than an earthday later that we were completely swarmed and separated. I didn’t see hide nor hair of anybody in what felt like half an earthweek and I was miserable, scared nutless and gutted by a stomach that felt ready to eat itself from the inside out.

The room I’d been dumped into that first day, if you could call it a room, was under the surface and surprisingly raw. Or maybe it shouldn’t have been so surprising – after all, the surface had looked so organic and unoccupied, so why should the underground structures be any different?

The door, best as I can surmise it was, was inset from the surrounding rock but looked to be the same material, like a stone in front of a cave mouth. The whole room was cavelike, as if it had been hewn and carved from stone, with a ledge along one end on which I slept, and a deep pool set in the floor at the other. The whole of it was lit (such as it was) by a phosphorescing moss that clung in clumps to the ceiling, out of reach.

After a day and a half my thirst had overcome my reluctance to drink unknown water; oddly, my uncertainty had been a little assuaged when, kneeling by the edge that slanted down into the water, I saw more than a few tiny cephalopods in the depths. They shifted and writhed a little when I dipped my hand in. Several of them turned to aim dark eyes in my direction, while a few others launched themselves from the rockface to disappear deeper than the weak light could penetrate. Half-smiling, I waved at the creatures through the rippling water and drank a little more, until the cramping of my otherwise empty stomach around the fluid pushed me to go curl up on the ledge at the other end of the room.

I’d slept, and walked a bit unsteadily back over to the pool when I wakened. I couldn’t quite remember how many days they said we could go without eating, but I knew if I got dehydrated, I was screwed. Well, more screwed. This time when I knelt, one of the creatures was just under the surface of the water, featureless black eyes turned upward – and it fetched a tentacle from the rock to waggle slowly through the water.

The laugh I barked out was raspy, echoing hollowly off the walls, and I raised my own hand to wave again. Apparently satisfied, it lowered it’s tentacle and I watched it crawl arm over arm back down the slope to the deeper shadow where other similar forms waited, and there they moved sluggishly about in patterns I did not understand, ignoring me.

I drank, and stripped down to rinse myself off; even without much activity I was feeling pretty rank. I drank a little more.

I slept.

There finally came a point where it ached all over too much to walk, and I simply slept by the side of the pool; sometimes I woke to find one of them watching me, sometimes a whole bunch of them just under the surface. Not a one of them looked any larger than my hand, but there were a lot of them, and whenever I actually looked at them they would all raise a tentacle to wave at me. I waved back.

Not long after waking and waving, the door finally rolled open, rock grinding on rock. The space beyond was incredibly brightly lit compared to the dim, diffuse light of my room, and I really couldn’t get a good fix on the shape ofthe creature in the doorway. It moved, and the Captain’s transcom unit clattered across the floor to land near me.

Reaching out unsteady hands, I clipped it to my collar and fit the tiny buds into my ears.

“You. Can leave,” came the translation of the sounds from the doorway, and I blinked slowly, with a short, nervous shake of my head.

“I… Can leave?” I grinned uncertainly, starting to push to my feet.

“You can leave. But. You must. Eat. First.”

“Okay,” I said, relieved at the prospect, finally, of a meal. I was unsteady, but I managed, brushing off my trousers. Then there came a strange sharp sound that the transcom couldn’t translate.

“You must. Eat. To leave.” The shape unfolded a stiff-looking, too long limb that had more joints than my mind wanted to comprehend, gesturing at the pool.

“They. Have the same. Option.”

The door ground closed with the same ponderous gravitas with which it had opened, leaving me blinking through the dim, staring down at the cephalopods. More of them had come creeping out of the depths as I had talked with our captor, and they were all staring just as blankly back at me.

One of them raised a tentacle. I waved back. The transcom beeped.

Hours later I cried out at the door until finally it opened, and with tentacles clinging to me everywhere they could find purchase, we burst forth with a roar into the light.